


Whose Prayers Would Make Me Whole

by gaslightgallows (hearts_blood)



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Thor (Movies)
Genre: Conversations, Fluff and Angst, Forgiveness, Gen, Ghosts, Introspection, Loki (Marvel) Needs a Hug, Mother-Son Relationship, Parent Frigga (Marvel)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-29
Updated: 2017-12-29
Packaged: 2019-02-23 13:35:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,483
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13191192
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hearts_blood/pseuds/gaslightgallows
Summary: In Loki and Frigga’s lives, accidents happen all the time. So does forgiveness.





	Whose Prayers Would Make Me Whole

**Author's Note:**

  * For [UniversesVisiting](https://archiveofourown.org/users/UniversesVisiting/gifts).



> Written for universesvisiting, for [42\. “I swear it was an accident.” (Loki & Frigga)](http://gaslightgallows.tumblr.com/post/167485714172/send-me-a-pairing-and-a-number-and-ill-write-you)
> 
> Will I ever get tired of writing stories about Loki & his mum? All signs point to ‘no’.

Loki hung his head. "I didn't mean to," he insisted. "It just sort of... happened."

Frigga looked at her younger son with carefully-concealed frustration. It was not his fault that he had set the Vanir ambassador's gown alight. He was still learning to control the talents she had shown him how to use. "Little one, I know. But you should not have been practicing alone."

"I didn't know the ambassador was going to be in the garden, Mama - I was waiting for you!" He looked up accusingly, tears streaking his cheeks. "You promised we could practice today! You promised a week ago! And then you didn't come!"

"Oh, Loki..." Frigga caught her skirts in one hand and knelt before him, her eyes sorrowful. "I'm sorry. I meant to come, but your father needed me to help him entertain the ambassador." And perhaps to remind her of her promise, to harden her heart against their adopted child, to stop giving him more attention than their blood son, to always be mindful that Loki needed to be raised as an Asgardian warrior, not as a Jotunn sorcerer.

Her child's pale plump face screwed up in disappointment. "That's what you _always_ say. Why is Father more important than me?"

"He is _not_ 'more important' than you, Loki. He is the king. And we are all his subjects and must obey him."

Loki hung his head again. "Is Father going to punish me?"

She touched his hair gently. "No, little one. He is annoyed, of course, and you will have to apologize to the ambassador, but they all know it was an accident. In fact," she added, with a smile of maternal pride, "the ambassador was quite impressed with your spell, even if it did singe her hemline."

"She _was_?" His astonished delight broke Frigga's heart, but it was nothing compared to her devastation when his smile faded, and he muttered, "I wish Father would be."

* * *

"I had nothing to do with it," her recalcitrant son insisted, lying blithely to her face.

"Loki," Frigga said, in a voice that both of her sons knew well. She was pleased to see him stand just the tiniest bit straighter, at the sound. "Trained and experienced war horses do not randomly start bucking and throwing their riders in the street like unbroken colts. Do you think I did not sense your magic in the air? You had _everything_ to do with it."

His grin was brief, brilliant, and unrepentant. "The parade was so dull, I just livened things up a little. You like my tricks!"

"I mislike them when mischief turns to cruelty." She brushed a heavy lock of black hair from his eyes. "You could have hurt someone. Either one of the people in the streets or one of the warriors."

His pale eyes were angry, and held a coldness Frigga had never seen before. "They deserved it."

"What harm did they do?"

"You _know_ what they did," he spat, glaring at her with all the disdain a teenaged boy could muster. "Everyone in Asgard knows."

She doubted that. Everyone in the palace, perhaps, but to a prince, for whom the palace comprised his entire world, it was the same thing. So everyone knew... everyone, it seemed, except his mother, which was clearly compounding his hurt. "Humor me," said Frigga.

His jaw tightened, the hard lean line of it so at odds with what remained of the baby-round cheeks he had not yet entirely shed. "They won't stop saying that you aren't my mother."

A sudden and terrible fear gripped her heart. "Not your mother? Rubbish."

"That's the rumor. That I'm Odin's bastard. That he got me on some peasant woman and brought me back after the Winter War, and made you raise me."

Frigga nearly closed her eyes in relief. It was an old rumor, and one that she _had_ heard, many times in the past. But it had been so long, and she had hoped her own behavior towards the boy, which she knew veered from doting into almost coddling at times, had put those whispers to rest ages ago.

He hesitated over his next statement, as though it pained him even more, and then rushed on, angry words tumbling all together. "Worse, I've even heard—"

"That you are _my_ bastard son, I suppose."

Loki hung his head, his long hair falling over his face. "Yes." But he seemed more resigned to that possibility. _And why would he not,_ thought Frigga, with the touch of bitterness that had been with her since his babyhood, _when Odin fawns over his heir and leaves Loki to me? At least if he was my natural son, he would know for certain where he stood._

"It's not true," she said simply. "Any of it." And then nearly wept at the relief that spread across her son's face. "My love for Odin is vast and deep and sometimes unwise, but if he were to simply present me with his distaff child and expect me to raise them without question, then you can believe me, Loki, all of Asgard would indeed know, for we would have _words_ , Odin and me. And they would be words ill-befitting a king and queen."

That made him giggle, in spite of his upset, as she had hoped.

"And as to me getting you from someone other than Odin... really, Loki. With my high standards, who else would I bother with?" She smirked at his sudden blush, and pressed a fond kiss to his forehead. "Let your heart be at ease in this matter," she soothed. "You are my son, and Odin's, and a prince of the royal house of Asgard. And this," she added, tugging his hair lightly, "proves it."

Loki frowned. "It does? But..."

"What, you think that because Thor is blond that you must be also, because I am?"

"Father's hair was light, when I was a little child."

"Odin was old when you and your brother were young," she reminded him. "One of the dangers – or benefits – of taking a wife in your twilight years is that there is no one left who remembers you when you were young and dashing and foolish." Frigga lifted a hand and sketched a rough image into the air. The brilliant gold lines glowed and then faded into a translucent, living portrait. "That is Odin when he was in his prime."

And it was, though it was a man whom Frigga herself had never seen in the flesh. Only old portraits and books forbidden to all by a few now held this man's face. But Loki drank up the sight of Odin's unseamed visage, the brilliant eyes and long dark hair and the air of suave mastery that had long ago been the hallmark of the Heir of Bor. "You look like your father," she said, her arm around his thin shoulders.

So awed was Loki at this glimpse of the king's early days that his quick mind was distracted away from any chance of realizing that, in all her reassurances, Frigga had never once claimed to have borne him.

* * *

"Why didn't you tell me?" he demanded, stalking his gilded cage while her image followed him with sad eyes. "Odin had plans for me, I see that now. But you, 'Mother'. Why didn't _you_ tell me, since you claim to love me so much?"

"What I claim is only a portion of what I feel. There aren't enough words in all the universe to tell it." Alone in her chamber, gazing in anguish at the image of her trapped child, Frigga stood scrying into the fire, longing to reach out and hold him, comfort him. But even if she was there, she knew he would move away from her hands. His posture screamed it to the world, that he was not to be touched. She tried to remember the last time she had embraced her son... It had been years.

"But more than enough words to avoid the question," Loki sneered. "And they call _me_ manipulative."

"I wanted to tell you. But the time never seemed right. We said, 'Tomorrow we will sit the boys down and explain matters', and then found excuses to say nothing. We promised ourselves that we would tell you the truth on your next birthday, and then when the day came, we let ourselves be distracted by the celebrations."

"That date isn't even my birthday, is it? It's just the day he brought me here, like some orphaned puppy. So cruel, to celebrate my birth on the anniversary of Jotunheim's decimation."

"Accidents of chance got in the way of our best intentions. And the longer we waited..."

"One lie of omission compounding another, on down through the centuries. Not that your lies were only those of omission. And so I am not only a stolen relic, I am an afterthought to boot." His face darkened and twisted with rage. "That's all I've ever been. To Odin, to you..." He let out a short sharp laugh, and it was like a dagger burying itself to the hilt in her throat. "So much for mother love."

"I was afraid," Frigga whispered.

"Of course you were. I was always something to be feared. That has not changed."

"I was afraid of losing you."

"...What?"

"You were always so driven and curious. You wanted to know everything, learn everything. And I was afraid, when you were a boy, that if we told you the truth, you would leave Asgard in search of your true heritage. And..." The lump in her throat was unbecoming of a queen to an imprisoned subject, but Frigga did not feel at all queenly at that moment. "I was so afraid of losing my son. Not to Jotunheim, not to Laufey, but to another mother. I never wanted to hide the truth from you, but I was desperate not to lose you."

Loki stared at her for a long time, lips thin, jaw tight, eyes unreadable. Finally, he turned away. "I was lost a long time ago," he murmured. "Long before I was your son."

He did not see the look on Frigga's face in reaction to his despairing words, but if he had, he might have doubted his own downfall.

* * *

"You saved them all."

"Utterly unintentional on my part, I assure you." Then Loki frowned. "Am I hallucinating?"

Frigga smiled down at him. "No, little one."

Loki's eyes flicked hesitantly from the ceiling to the slightly out-of-focus woman standing beside his bed on the ship, and then he sat up slowly (making sure to keep the blanket in place, since he was rather underdressed for polite company). "How?"

"If I could explain it, I would. As I can't..." She sat down beside him, and Loki felt the bed shift under another being's weight. He tensed when she reached out to touch him, and then gasped softly at the familiar feeling of her fingers against his cheek. "Oh, Loki," Frigga whispered. "I've missed you."

He thought for a moment that he might burst from the emotions crowding behind his ribs and eyes, but in the end, he simply leaned forward and rested his forehead on her shoulder, breathing hard and slow to avoid anything more embarrassing than the ooze of tears soaking her gown, while she stroked his hair and rubbed his bare back as if he were no more than a babe in arms.

"You did, though," she continued, when he had calmed. "You saved everyone."

"Not everyone. And I didn't do anything." He sat up and ran his hand through his hair. "Well, except set the planet on fire, that part was me."

"Humility does not suit you," Frigga teased. Loki drew back a little, but she held him fast, lacing her fingers through his. "You went after Thor."

"He goaded me. I couldn't let him have the last word."

"You fought alongside people who terrify you."

"I am _not_ terrified of the Hulk. ...The Valkyrie does scare me, I'll grant you that."

"You gave Thor the strength he needed to reach his powers."

"I... what?"

"In the arena, and at the final battle with Hela."

Loki shook his head. "I didn't do anything—"

"Loki. Your powers of illusion do not stop at what can be seen with the eyes. And I know full well that Odin did not appear to Thor in motivational visions. Even if he could have done so, it's not his style."

"...Let's hope Thor never realizes that," Loki muttered, ducking his head and blushing furiously, as he had in his youth when he'd been caught doing something either supremely generous or else supremely illegal. "I don't think I could stand his gratitude." Then he looked up with sudden fear. "Is that... Am I doing that to myself, without meaning to? Are you only an illusion?"

Frigga chuckled and kissed his forehead. "Oh, my boy. You only wish you were that talented."

"I'm not hallucinating? You're... you're really here? I didn't suffer irreparable brain damage from having that cursed obedience disc zapping me for twenty minutes straight?"

"...No, Loki," she repeated, with practiced maternal patience. "I am here. Not alive as you understand the term, but... here." She smiled sadly, all too aware of what had befallen him over the last several years, to make him doubt his senses.

"Can... can you ever forgive me?" he asked softly, tracing with one fingertip the valleys and ridges of their joined hands, and watching the strange new power of her presence ripple against the edge of reality. "The last time we met... I said you weren't my mother."

"I knew you didn't mean it, my darling. Can you ever forgive me?"

"Yes. I have to do it every day, but... yes."

* * *

Even with his legs dangling over the edge of the cliff where Odin had last stood, Loki knew that his arms were still the safest place for his newborn daughter. Well, apart from her mother's arms, but as her mother was currently taking a well-deserved nap after bringing this little scrap of life into the world, her father's arms would have to do. Gently, he stroked her soft brown cheek with the back of his forefinger.

It was bad luck to say a child's name before they were officially welcomed into the family, but Loki had his own ideas about luck. He touched his lips to his daughter's forehead. "Frigga," he whispered, too softly for any but the child to hear, and let the wind carry the word away.

And it wasn't long until he felt the ripple of a power he still didn't understand, and a soft hand touched his shoulder. "And who is this?" his mother's voice teased fondly, as she leaned down to catch a glimpse of her first grandchild.

"Oh, well," Loki smiled, unable to tear his eyes away. "She just sort of... happened."


End file.
